Cash runway is how many months the business can continue at its current rate. Extending it means changing one of two things: how fast money leaves, or how fast it arrives.
Most owners reach for cutting first. Collecting is usually faster and costs nothing.
Start with money already earned
Chase everything overdue, today. Not a review of the process — the actual list, this afternoon. Most overdue invoices in a small business are administrative rather than disputes, and a direct, unemotional message recovers a surprising share within a week. See overdue invoices.
Invoice immediately. If work finishes Tuesday and invoices go out at month end, you have added up to four weeks to every job for no reason. This alone often moves runway by a fortnight.
Turn on card payment. An invoice a customer can pay from their phone gets paid in days rather than weeks. The processing fee is smaller than the cost of the delay it removes. See invoicing setup.
Set up automatic reminders. They work because they go out on time without anybody having to decide to have an awkward conversation, and that hesitation is what turns a seven-day problem into a ninety-day one.
Then slow what is leaving
Read every recurring charge. Software, subscriptions, services. Each was justified once and the total never gets reviewed. See recurring payments.
Use supplier terms. Paying on day 30 instead of day 3, where the terms allow it, is free working capital. Do not do this by simply paying late — that costs you the relationship and sometimes the terms.
Defer, do not cancel, anything with a payback. Marketing that generates work is the last thing to cut, and frequently the first thing cut, which is how a cash problem becomes a revenue problem two months later.
Delay committed spending — equipment, hires, vehicles — until the runway is longer. A purchase that is right at six months of runway can be dangerous at two.
Where owners get it wrong
Cutting marketing first. It is the easiest line to cut and it lengthens the problem.
Cutting the wrong people. Losing a technician reduces cost and capacity together, so revenue falls with it.
Discounting to bring cash forward. It works once, and it resets what those customers expect to pay.
If it is genuinely short
Talk to your bank or lender before it is urgent, not after. Terms available at three months of runway are not the terms available at three weeks, and the conversation is far easier while you still have options.
Then keep it there
The lasting fix is the cash conversion cycle — the days between paying for work and being paid for it. Taking a fifty-day cycle to thirty permanently reduces how much cash the business needs to hold, which is a different and better outcome than a one-off recovery.